I was on the day shift as a weather observer at RAF Kinloss in Morayshire on the 13th of March 1989. We had got quite blase about seeing aurora since we moved to northern Scotland in 1987. The display of the 13th March 1989 was quite different though, not only did it start very early in the evening, but also started on the southern horizon! Not only that, the animated multi-coloured coronal structures extended right up to the zenith. I filled the remarks column of the daily register with details, and added the special 9 group at the end of the SYNOPSYNOP SYNOP (surface synoptic observations) is a numerical code (called FM-12 by WMO) used for reporting weather observations made by manned and automated weather stations. SYNOP reports are typically mad hourly and consist of groups of numbers (and slashes where data is not available) describing general weather information, such as the temperature, barometric pressure and visibility at a weather station. report for direction and intensity or something like (memory fails), which believe it or not the WMOWMO The World Meteorological Organisation is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science, climatology, hydrology and geophysics. deprecated!. The night shift came in I drove home and alerted all our neighbours in our cul-de-sac as the display was still in full swing. Quite memorable. Now observing the aurora is all the rage and the UKMOUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy are now into ‘Space Weather’ how things have changed in the last 35 years. I had a Canon A1 film camera back then, but I was probably just too excited watching it to get my camera out, and was content just to marvel at it.
I couldn’t quite fix the date it occurred, until I came across this letter from R.J.Livesey that mentioned the display and which I’ve included.
